The free Amazon Instant Video for iPad app hit the App Store Wednesday morning. The app lets you buy and stream videos from the company -- Amazon claims a library of 120,000 videos -- or, if you're an Amazon Prime member, watch more than 17,000 of them for free. Another feature is offline viewing: You can download purchased and rented videos from Your Video Library and watch them when a Wi-fi connection is unavailable.

That feature is already available for the Kindle Fire, but it hasn't been for the iPad until now. At the moment, the iOS app is just for the iPad -- there's no iPhone version.

Amazon Instant Video was introduced in early 2011 and was initially available on Mac, PC, Roku, TiVo and a variety of Internet-connected TV and Blu-ray players. The service was seen as a competitor to Netflix and an enticement to further subscriptions for Amazon Prime, a $79 annual program that offers free shipping and free streaming video.